


Demon Lover

by karelian



Category: Actor RPF, Lord of the Rings RPF, The Prophecy (1995)
Genre: Angels, Bondage and Discipline, Celebrities, Confessions, Crossover, Fallen Angels, M/M, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Rough Sex, Secrets, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-11-25
Updated: 2003-11-25
Packaged: 2017-10-03 17:43:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karelian/pseuds/karelian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Devil from <i>The Prophecy</i> is a very tempting Prince of Darkness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Demon Lover

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea whether Sean Bean has met the Devil -- I don't even know whether he's seen _The Prophecy_. This fic was inspired by Viva Gloria and Cinzia.

Sean Bean is watching _The Prophecy_ again.

He's been postponing it all evening, trying to find ways to stay distracted. A beer, phone calls to his kids, flipping through the _Guardian_. Another beer, some crisps, turning the television on and off, reading a few pages of a script that his agent faxed over. Making a couple more calls to people he needs to catch up with, glancing at a sports magazine. Opening one more beer. Finally he gives up and pops in the tape.

It's all quite entertaining, reflects the Devil as he sits invisibly beside Sean on the couch. The man squirms, running impatient fingertips over the buttons on the remote control as the film drags through tedious scenes with an overemotive Virginia Madsen and that kid who can't act. Sean finally presses down one finger, sending the movie into fast-forward. When he reaches the scene where the woman wanders into the desert, he sits back to watch, maintaining his grip on the remote which he jiggles in his lap like he needs something to do with his hands. But his eyes focus on the television -- right on the face of the man playing Lucifer.

"Just look at the way you want him," the Devil whispers silently. Sean's expression tightens and his breathing speeds up. His hand clenches on the plastic of the remote, but he does not break eye contact with his personal demon onscreen. Viggo Mortensen.

The Devil has watched _The Prophecy_ more times than he cares to admit, wavering between outrage and satisfaction at his portrayal in the movie. Lucifer ultimately loses his hold on the main character, Thomas (and the woman, but who cares about her really). This irks the Devil, though it's an improvement over those faux pop-culture Princes of Darkness who are always losing fiddle competitions or letting the Yankees win the pennant. Besides, the Devil can't deny that Viggo has charm -- not as flashy as Jack Nicholson in _The Witches of Eastwick_ but subtle and tragic.

And sexy as hell.

Sean inhales harshly as, on the television, Lucifer finishes tearing the petals off a rose and bites down on the stem. Leaning closer, the Devil murmurs, "Why don't you find his next scene?" The image onscreen distorts as Sean presses the fast-forward button, stopping just before Lucifer clutches Thomas in his arms and entices him.

There they are, the man with Temptation wrapped around his body, helpless to resist the lips caressing his ear. "This is my favorite part of the movie," admits the Devil, still in a voice outside Sean's range of conscious hearing. The two of them watch together, rapt, as Lucifer presses against Thomas, nearly driving the man insane.

"Viggo," breathes Sean. And instantly shuts his eyes in embarrassment, even though, as far as he knows, there is no one in the room to hear him. Quickly he presses buttons on the remote control, speeding to the end of the film. When (the character of) Lucifer runs his tongue up the face of (the character of) Gabriel, Sean rewinds to watch it again. And again. In slow motion.

Watching the watcher is even more entertaining than watching the film. "You want him to do that to you," the Devil hisses. To humans it sounds like a puff of wind, easily explained away as a draft, not the hiss of a serpent. The man fidgets, crossing and uncrossing his legs, though his eyes never budge. Onscreen Lucifer slurps blood from Gabriel's forehead; even the Devil feels sympathetic envy. "Look at that tongue of his. Imagine the things he could do to you with it..."

Again, shamefaced, Sean shuts his eyes. He makes the screen go dark for a few moments before rewinding to Lucifer's first scene -- Viggo's first scene. As he slouches on the sofa, Sean's feet spread slightly on the floor in front of him. The hand holding the remote rests between his legs, and while he watches the counter tick off the seconds to Viggo's reappearance, his thumb wanders over the bulge in his jeans. It's going to be too easy, thinks the Devil, watching flesh twitch and throb beneath the material.

As soon as his host finds the scene he's searching for, the Devil whispers, "Pause the tape." Sean does, though he appears surprised at himself, staring down at the controls like they have a mind of their own. Onscreen he has frozen Lucifer halfway between a smile and a sneer, blue eyes bright with false innocence. "Put down the remote," suggests the Devil. "And unsnap your jeans."

Uneasily Sean looks around. His magnificent cheekbones are covered by a dark pink blush and his tongue keeps flicking out to wet his lips. He checks to see that the curtains are closed, glances in the direction of the door. As far as Sean can tell, he's quite alone -- just himself and the screen from which pseudo-Lucifer gazes into his eyes.

Sean unsnaps his jeans, unzips them. Slides his hand inside, perfectly still for a moment, still not sure about following this impulse. "Go on," the silent voice urges. Perhaps it's that, or perhaps it's merely the warmth of his own fingers that makes him start to move, hips rocking upward as his buttocks clench. His head falls back with a faint groan, his eyes begin to drift shut. Squinting at his nemesis in the form of Viggo, who continues to stare back with that knowing gaze, Sean's jaw hangs open. His free hand rubs his balls through the fabric of his clothes. He's urgent, needy, flushed with desire -- a creature of raw carnal beauty.

There's a shift in the air, a slow thick shimmer of solid heat. The Devil takes form, there on the sofa, watching.

"God!" Jerking his fingers free as if he's touched an open flame, Sean propels himself into the corner of the cushions. Staring with his mouth open and his eyes so wide that the smoky green irises are completely surrounded by white, he clutches the back of the sofa for support.

The Devil, of course, is laughing -- laughing at Sean's expression, at his terror, particularly at his oath. Naturally the form the Devil has taken mirrors that of the image onscreen -- Lucifer-as-Viggo-as-Lucifer. "God is love, and I don't love you," he says, mimicking the character in the movie.

Sean swallows hard. His chest heaves, and the Devil wonders if he's about to throw up the beer he drank earlier. The man blinks repeatedly, shakes his head, glares in the direction of the bottle on the table beside him like he suspects it's drugged. Then he lunges forward, grabbing the Devil by the sleeve of his black coat.

Just as quickly he sits back, staring at his fingers (the same fingers that were wrapped around his cock moments before the Devil appeared). There's the predictable stammer, "Yuh, yuh, you're real." A glance back at the screen, where Lucifer remains trapped in two dimensions. Then Sean peeks at the real thing once more, his fear rapidly replaced by humiliation -- scarlet across his face and welling in his eyes.

"Viggo?" he asks, endearingly, not only because it's the only explanation his mind will accept, but also because, deep down, he wants it to be true.

"No," the Devil tells him, not without a little regret. "He couldn't have snuck in without your noticing. You know who I am."

"Christ," says Sean as he turns away. It's a regular source of amusement -- the conflation of heaven and hell in the minds of men. This man rapidly fumbles with the zipper and snap on his jeans, but his shaking fingers won't cooperate.

"Don't worry about that," the Devil soothes. "It's not like I haven't watched you jack off to this scene before."

"I...I wasn't...jack...jacking off to the scene. It just...happened to be on."

At that, the Devil can't help grinning. "You've jacked off to this scene every night for the past week," he reminds Sean. "You've just never done it with the television on before." Now that Sean's hands have released their grip on the cushions, he has no way to anchor himself. His arms start to shake. He presses them tight against his body, but the tremors spread until all of him is shuddering, making the sofa lurch.

"Don't worry," adds the Devil. "Your secret is safe with me." Still, he can smell the fear in Sean's perspiration, beading on his upper lip and his temples, and he cannot resist teasing the man. The Devil's head inclines toward the television, indicating Viggo Mortensen's face frozen in contemptuous smirk. "Though maybe someone should tell _him_."

Those words make Sean stop shaking. Pissing people off generally has that effect, no matter how terrified they are to discover that the King of Hell is real -- to acknowledge all that that implies. In one corner of his mind, from the moment the Devil appeared to him, Sean has been reciting prayers learned in childhood. But they didn't stop his fear and now they're not stopping his anger. "Just get the fuck out of my life," he spits in his beautiful accent, coughing out the verb, turning the guttural profanity into something more akin to a coo.

It makes the Devil laugh, though not cruelly, for Lucifer-Viggo is never cruel without cause. Lucifer-Viggo tempts men in the movie by holding out what they already want. Better to smile at Sean with all the earnest sweetness of the man whose image he has adopted. "You could make me leave, you know," the Devil admits. He suspects that Sean has already realized this. If Sean believed in God a little more, or doubted a little less, or if he wasn't still so hard and aching and wanting...

"Just tell me why you're here and then get out."

The videotape un-pauses. "I can lay you out and fill your mouth with your mother's feces, or we can talk," says Lucifer on the small screen. Sean's head whips around, from the television to the being on his couch and back, before he picks up the remote and hits the stop button to silence the man in the film.

No more competition from the real Viggo, then; pity, thinks the Devil, who had rather expected to enjoy it. "Aren't you going to finish?" he asks Sean.

"Finish...?" Sean repeats in a dangerous voice.

It's no wonder this man gets cast as villains, far more often than his soft-spoken, subtler friend. "The movie," the Devil explains helpfully. "You skipped quite a bit of it. Though I couldn't help notice how much you liked the scene with Lucifer's tongue."

"Get out," Sean barks one more time. He's breathing through his mouth, his chest heaving. Even by movie-star standards he's damned gorgeous. The Devil rises, and the man, looking startled, follows him up. He's sweating hard enough for dark circles to show in the fabric of his shirt beneath his armpits. His pants are still open, his cock still erect. Apparently he hadn't simply expected the Devil to walk out.

"It isn't only skin-deep," smiles the Devil. "I can _be_ him for you."

"No you can't. You think I wouldn't know the difference?" Beneath the anger, there's sorrow in the voice. Very nearly despair. A familiar state. "If that's why you came here, you've wasted your time."

The Devil shrugs out of his coat, drops it onto the floor. Narrowing his eyes, Sean gives his form a brief study before looking away. With a brief electric surge invisible to human eyes the Devil starts the tape again. A face identical to his stares out at them both. Sean's gasp is audible. "Please go," he says, no less assertively, but with a new bitterness, twisted inward.

"Or," the Devil adds thoughtfully, "I suppose I could be you for him, instead."

"You stay the fuck away from him!" Sean has already stepped forward before he remembers who he's dealing with, and it's too late to arrest himself in mid-stride, so he ends up much closer to the Devil. His composure is rather remarkable, really. "He wouldn't believe you anyway. You know Viggo, don't you? You've watched him enough to know that much?" Sean's shoulders shift back as he ponders. "That's why you're here. I can't believe you'd bother with me, otherwise. It's about him."

On the television the film has continued to play. "You chose the tape," drawls the Devil, stepping out of his shoes and, a moment later, his pants.

"What in hell are you doing?"

"You're not in Hell. I'm getting undressed." Of course the Devil could simply make his clothes disappear, but that tends to make people panicky. This way he has Sean watching openmouthed as piece by piece he reveals his borrowed body. It's Viggo's, every scar, every freckle, though immortal skin doesn't scar or blemish. He knows that Sean will recognize the moles, the pattern of hair, and that will make Sean think about just how closely he's studied this body -- just how much it excites him.

Sean's hands hover by his groin, over his still-unfastened jeans, seemingly unable to decide whether they want to cover his arousal or give it a good squeeze. In the end he settles for picking the remote back up and turning off the movie once more. "Why are you," he asks, enunciating every word carefully, as if he's rehearsing a play or talking to a child, "getting undressed?"

"Don't you like it?" It's all too easy for the Devil to play Viggo, to give Sean the same look Viggo gives people when he's he's showing them his photographs...a little bit nonchalant, a little bit nervous, willing to listen to criticism but worried that he's being humored rather than taken seriously. The Devil has dropped in on all of Viggo Mortensen's shows since _The Prophecy_, aware that one day the man would likely become a superstar and thus be poised to create social havoc. With Susan Sarandon becoming respectable and Madonna tedious, there aren't enough celebrities stirring up political unrest these days. The Devil has been wondering if he'll have to start goading Warren fucking Beatty again.

The politics with which Sean Bean has been linked mostly involve tree-hugging, which the Devil finds hopelessly boring, even if it's an improvement over Greenpeace. No fun tempting him in that arena. Besides, it's hard to imagine Sean more tempted than he seems right now. He's looking the Devil over and over again, staring in a way the Devil's sure he never let himself stare at Viggo, breathing through his mouth because he can't close it, clasping one hand around the opposite wrist to keep himself from reaching out.

The Devil is hard, of course. He's always hard. There's no relief. But it's handy, sometimes, as a prop. "Want to touch?" he asks Sean with an inviting smile. "You'll never come this close again."

He can see from the flare of Sean's nostrils that his words have struck home, but Sean isn't going to make things easy for either of them. "Liar," the man grates, reminding himself. "You're the Prince of Lies. I don't have to believe a word you say."

"You're right," the Devil nods agreeably. "But I might be right. What have you got to lose?"

The grin that crosses Sean's face could earn him a place recruiting for the Devil's team, were he so inclined. There's a quick baring of teeth, narrowing of the eyes, yet there's also genuine humor and the knowledge of his own power -- chin up, shoulders even. "My soul," he replies, and though it's not really a question, it deserves an answer.

"Not unless you give it to me. When I take human form, I lose a lot of my power. Just like Captain Marvel. I can't even read your mind."

Comically, the latter seems to relieve Sean even more than learning that he won't lose his soul for a fuck. Still, he continues to stare suspiciously. "Why all this, then? You resent the way Viggo plays you in the movie?"

"On the contrary. He's a lot better than Elizabeth Hurley."

A calculating look crosses Sean's face. "I've worked with her. Could you appear as her?"

"Shut your eyes." Sean does, and for a few seconds, the Devil shifts into the form of the model not as she looked in _Bedazzled_ but as he remembers her years earlier from that _Sharpe_ movie, a whore with her tits bared. Sean peeks, opens his eyes wide, then closes them again, shaking his head, not wanting to see more. It's an irresistible chance. The Devil turns himself into Sean's ex-wife -- also in costume from _Sharpe_, with her most bitter, contemptuous expression twisting her thin lips.

When Sean opens his eyes, he's faced with that visage. He takes a step backward, trying to cover up with his hands; he looks as horrified about being seen by Abigail's phantom as he did upon finding the Archfiend on his couch. Finally he whirls away. Chuckling, the Devil takes the opportunity to restore his appearance as Viggo-Lucifer.

"I thought you said you couldn't do tricks!" Sean snaps over his shoulder.

"I said I couldn't read your mind. I never said I couldn't do tricks." Slowly the man turns back around. "I don't need to read your mind to know what you want, Sean," the Devil adds with a sly smile, looking pointedly at Sean's cock half-hidden under disarrayed clothes. It throbs and swells under his gaze.

"I don't want you," comes the reply in a surprisingly steady voice.

"I may not be your first choice, but I'm here and he's not. Maybe we can make a deal. Impress me, and I'll provide the real thing."

"I don't want him as some bloody possession!"

The conviction is so earnest and so sweet that the Devil can't help but be moved. "You're not thinking this through very carefully." Patiently, he smiles. "You were right: I wouldn't have noticed you if it hadn't been for him. But surely you realize you're not the only person who lusts after him, even as this character -- " He gestures at Viggo-Lucifer's nude body, the one he's wearing at the moment. "You're one of thousands, maybe tens of thousands."

"So why come to me..." Sean stops and swallows as he guesses the answer to his own question. His face colors, his breathing grows ragged.

"Maybe he wants you as some bloody possession."

"He...thinks about me? That way?"

"How badly do you want to know?" The Devil doesn't really need to ask -- he can see. There's longing scrawled all over the man's features. Sean's eyes turn foggy and faraway, examining old memories, looking for patterns. He looks scared and sick and...hopeful. It's a feeling the Devil can experience only vicariously, and like an addiction, he seeks it out in the midst of despair.

"Tell me to stop if you want," smirks the Devil, and drops to his knees, pulling Sean's pants down with one tug. The man yelps in surprise, but doesn't say anything about stopping, not even when the Devil, still grinning Viggo's grin, wraps his unnaturally long tongue around Sean's pulsating cock. If he weren't stuck with Viggo's body, the Devil could give Sean the blow job of his life -- he could wind his tongue up from the base of his cock like a snake until it was encircled twice, using the forked tip to stroke the head while the coils squeezed and tugged at the shaft. But Viggo doesn't have a forked tongue...not that that seems to be any loss to Sean, who is rigid and hot, so close...

Abruptly Sean pulls the Devil to his feet and moves back a step, as if he can't risk being touched at the moment. "This is...what is it, what's the price..."

"It's just sex." The eyes of the Devil are wide and sincere. "But it's surrender, Sean. You understand that? You and I both know that if you could have him," head inclining toward the now-silent screen, "you wouldn't look at me. Even though I can fulfill every fantasy you've ever had, including the ones you can't describe to anyone because they're so filthy."

"Then what are you getting out of it?"

"What does anyone ever get with a lover who's dreaming of someone else? I'm getting your passion. I'm getting an admission of need." The Devil wonders if Sean realizes that he's nodding. "I'm getting your despair."

For an instant the man looks like he feels sorry for his adversary. "Don't you have enough of that already?"

"But I don't have anyone to share it with. Do you?"

This one is stubborn. This one doesn't cower behind dogma or self-righteousness. But this one is also lonely, and although he might have resisted temptation in any other form, even Aragorn's -- though wouldn't it have been fun to taunt Sean with the Ring? -- Sean is talking to Viggo's personal interpretation of the Devil. Not just an image of Viggo, but a reflection of the darkness inside him. Sean's acting technique is rather different -- he doesn't disappear into his characters, it's more that they superimpose themselves onto him, he's more recognizably himself.

Yet the Devil is sure that Sean can imagine how much of Viggo went into creating Lucifer. Viggo must have given something of himself to him. Viggo might have lived with the same sort of desperate hard-on while playing him.

A dark shadow falls across the Devil and he finds himself flat on the sofa, pinned down by the weight of the man, who is struggling to get out of his clothes without taking his hands off the Devil's wrists. "Tie them," suggests the Devil. Sean looks startled but he pulls his belt out of the loops, wrapping it twice around the Devil's wrists before realizing that the leather is too stiff to pull tight. He tugs it away, unraveling, sending the end of the belt lashing across the Devil's cheek. The Devil rocks with the strike, tilting his head toward the leather.

"You...liked that," Sean observes. His mouth hangs open, staring at the belt wrapped in his fist. "Can you feel pain in that body?"

"Not exactly." The truth is that the Devil feels pain all the time, deep scorching pain, and the blows from a belt or a whip are pleasantly distracting. "Take your shirt off. Tie my wrists with that. Hit me again."

For a moment Sean only gapes. Then his shirt is gone, it's in his hands, it's wrapped around the Devil's forearms, the long sleeves knotted twice, folded back on each other, twisted and knotted again. Of course it couldn't hold the Devil if he weren't willing -- it probably couldn't even hold Viggo Mortensen, if he struggled -- but it will serve. The Devil flips over, grinding his cock against the rough material of the cushions, while Sean removes what's left of his clothing -- all but his socks, which the Devil finds touching, as if the man thinks he can protect himself by keeping some small part of himself shielded. He steps forward, still holding the belt.

"Do it," orders the Devil from his prone position.

Sean is hesitant at first; his hand is shaking, and there's no passion in the blows. The Devil sends a spark of thought at the television, turns it on once more, freeze-frame: now Viggo is watching them, holding the heart of an angel in his hands, blood on his face, debauched. Shuddering visibly, Sean glances from the television to the lookalike in his living room, and something flares in his eyes.

When the belt falls again, there's fury in the strike, momentarily wiping out the room. The next blow carries all the weight of the man's frustration, his longing, the loathing he feels for himself because he can neither silence it nor act on it. Then he lashes out in self-disgust, in fear, in bitterness, the slap of the leather falling differently with each one, long and flat when he's enraged, staccato and sharp when he's desperate.

And underneath it all, there's hope, there's the love that Sean can't kill, no matter how hard he batters it. He is no longer being careful; he holds nothing back. The smacks ring high on the Devil's back knocking air out of his borrowed lungs, low across his thighs leaving bright burning welts that can never hurt enough, can't erase the thirty-nine lashes but can superimpose this physical place and time. It's the only thing the Devil can feel -- the beating and the emotion propelling it -- filling him, wiping out the icy emptiness that not all the flames of Hell could warm.

With a cry Sean throws the belt across the room in the general direction of the television, though it falls to the floor without reaching the ecstatic tormented face on the screen. "Fuck you," he gasps.

"Yes, fuck me," the Devil demands, rolling, with something of his own voice underlying Viggo's, the hissing roaring thunder that sends animals stampeding and men into bloody rages. Sean hesitates, on the verge of thinking too much. "Do it. You don't need protection. It's not that kind of danger. Fuck me as hard as you want."

The look in the man's eyes is terrible, full of grief and madness, but he deprives the Devil of the sight; he shuts them. Blindly he lunges, lying over the Devil, sinking his teeth into the falsely human skin and muscle of the Devil's shoulder. The bite is welcome, as are the fingers pushing roughly, opening him, exposing his darkness. Sean isn't gentle but he isn't deliberately trying to cause pain, either. The Devil wishes that he could feel the burning, tearing pressure the way a human would. Gripping down hard on the Devil's thighs, his temporary lover shoves his cock inside, grunting in surprise at the unnatural ease of the act -- the wet tight hot welcoming pit that clutches and sucks at him.

"Jesus," swears Sean. But he doesn't stop, pounding himself into the Devil the way he slammed the belt against him. The nearly hairless chest runs with sweat, well-toned biceps flexing and rippling, firm thighs slippery and slick. The Devil can feel no pleasure himself, lacking the relevant stimuli in his borrowed anatomy, though he can imagine what it actually would feel like to be Viggo Mortensen, lucky man, the recipient of this frenzy. His lover does not look at the Devil but fucks in dark oblivion, watching a movie behind his closed eyelids, making love to a fantasy the Devil cannot see.

Moments before his climax, Sean suddenly shoves himself away and stumbles off the sofa. The Devil watches the man as he deliberately turns, gazing at the face on the television screen. Sean pumps his own cock with the same relentless ferocity with which he has been fucking. His mouth can't form coherent words as it opens wide in a shout, but mind-reading isn't necessary to know that it's not the Devil's name on his lips, nor God's. His seed spurts over his chest and belly as he comes for the man who's not in the room.

Emptiness pushes its way through the Devil once more. Sean doesn't turn back to him, but sinks slowly to his knees on the floor between the sofa and the television, shoulders shaking.

"You can't have my despair," he says in a tight, strangled voice.

The Devil does not particularly enjoy being cruel. It's unnecessary; there's enough cruelty in the world of men already, enough needless hatred and anger, enough casual indifference and brutal selfishness, to make the vagaries of Hell unnecessary. If He still talked to the Devil, the Devil would ask Him why -- why His beloved talking monkeys were designed to be so selfish and vapid, even before the incident with the apple. Why give these creatures souls and spirits that can become as black as anything in Hell?

But of course He would find the very question a heresy. And although it's no consolation for what he has lost, the Devil sometimes finds very brief relief in collecting the souls that have given up -- particularly the ones that can be turned. He has come here for a purpose, and he knows the talking monkey in question would make a powerful addition to his list of allies.

So he speaks. "I already have your despair, Sean. Now give me your hope, and it will stop hurting you."

"No." The man turns. His eyes are red but his gaze is steady. "I won't give it to you, and you can't take it. Nobody can. I'm not like you." Still looking at the Devil, he rises and crosses the room.

The Devil thinks about his options. He could show his true face to Sean. That might break the man, to see exactly what he's been fucking, but if it does then Sean will be worthless to him and if it doesn't then he'll have no choice but to destroy him. He could taunt Sean, thank him for providing entertainment for the evening, mock that Sean will never know what it would be like with Viggo, but he's tried such tactics already.

So he shrugs, pulling his wrists free of the knotted shirt. "Viggo's a better fuck anyway."

Sean only grins. "I believe you." Swallowing hard, he reaches out for the phone.

"You're too late," warns the Devil. "What makes you think I didn't get to him first?"

"Because you wouldn't have come here. You needed something from me to get to him. I don't know what or why, but I'm not giving it to you."

"Even if you'll never have him otherwise?"

"Even if." The corners of Sean's mouth curl downward sadly but the set of his jaw is determined, and the Devil realizes that he's made a mistake with this man -- focused too little on Sean's unhappiness, revealed too much of his own agenda. Now that the blood supply is returning to his head -- the big head -- Sean is thinking clearly, calmly. "You can't give him to me, anyway."

"You've resisted the temptation of the Ring, Boromir. But it hasn't saved your kingdom, has it?" The Devil waves an arm, indicating the sofa, the scattered clothes. Something flickers in Sean's eyes.

"It wasn't ever my kingdom," says the man, picking up the receiver. The Devil recites the numbers as Sean dials them but he's unfazed, though evidently nervous; he leans back against the wall while he listens to the rings, wrapping the cord around and around his fingers as if it were a snake. It's easy to tell from the hitch in Sean's breathing when someone picks up at the other end.

"Viggo? It's...yeah. It's me." And he's blushing, smiling, looking down at his sock-clad feet, blind to both the Devil on the sofa and the one on the screen. "I was thinking about you, and how I should have called sooner...I, uh, yeah, I was watching _The Prophecy_." There's silence for a moment, then an embarrassed, happy chuckle. "Can I ask you a question? I know you must have thought about it when you were rehearsing the role. Do you believe in the Devil? ...what?... No, I won't think you're crazy..."

Maybe, the Devil thinks, he should have offered to turn Sean into a young football star who wins the Cup for Sheffield to gain his acquiescence. Except the Devil is a Liverpool fan. For that matter, maybe Sean Bean isn't worth the trouble, especially not as a means to get to Viggo Mortensen, who will probably prove to be just as unreliable a celebrity rabble-rouser as that unbearable bitch Jane Fonda. At least Viggo's unlikely to start putting out workout tapes.

It might be worth calling on Viggo soon anyway, but not tonight. Not if Viggo's wearing anything like the grin that Sean's got on now -- nothing but that and the socks, yet Sean doesn't look cold and he doesn't look exposed. He's in his own little bubble of joy that the Devil can't touch. Bit by bit, the Devil lets Lucifer's guise fall away, but although Sean glances over from time to time, he never appears to notice. He's laughing with Viggo, talking about bloody Method actors and shared realities and fuck I miss you.

Silently the Devil melts into invisibility, and only then he notices, to his surprise, that he is not alone. That goddamn annoying suck-up Simon is there, smiling beatifically and looking like Eric Stoltz in _The Prophecy_. The angel greets the Devil with an inclined head and what sounds almost like a warning. "That one is not for you."

"You didn't say 'Simon Says'," the Devil counters. He takes in the glowing blue eyes, hair the color of flame -- an archangel almost as beautiful as Lucifer, by human standards. "Long time, Simon. Don't tell me that this one has attracted the attention of...?"

His eyebrows lift in the same direction as his eyes, and the excruciating loss hits him anew -- pain that will never be assuaged by a laugh, a touch, a Word. He refuses to let Simon see it, turning his face away. "Were you here all along?" he asks instead.

"Gabriel noticed you here. If I didn't know better, I would think he liked that movie." There's no malice in the angel's laugh, and the Devil lets himself remember gentle Simon, who helped to hurl him out of Heaven yet took no pleasure from his fall. He manages to grin back.

"I don't remember when I was last in London," Simon continues. "Want to fly by the Tower and relive old memories?"

It's a trick, of course, a trap to lure the Devil away. But it wasn't ever his kingdom either. And this isn't a talking monkey -- this is one of the first-made. What could have prompted Simon's unexpected appearance? Maybe Viggo Mortensen's Devil is luring more souls into sin than even he suspects. Tens of thousands of fans, the Devil had suggested to Sean, thinking it was an exaggeration, but he could be wrong. Time to pay attention to those box office receipts and video rentals.

"Let's go," agrees the Devil, sparing a single backward glance for the man who is not, after all, drowning in despair. Viggo may be Lucifer incarnate, but Sean Bean looks like he's just rediscovered his soul. The Devil laughs. "Your Boss owes me one."


End file.
